Dar seafood ppp standard

7.2.1.3 Government

The current regulatory regime places few specific safety requirements for the hygienic production and processing of the seafood in most jurisdictions. Hence there is little pressure on Government enforcement resources.

7.2.2 Costs of Option 1

7.2.2.1 Consumers and the community

Current regulatory arrangements mean that some businesses are not required to undertake specific action to effectively manage food safety. The current Food Acts have a general obligation for primary producers to produce safe food – but does not give industry any guidance on these obligations. Where there is unmanaged risk, this gives rise to food-borne illness and imposes costs on consumers. Costs include personal distress, medical treatment, and time off work (patients and carers), with possible implications for forgone household income.

Australians consume over 1.1 billion seafood meals annually²⁶²⁷. Demand for seafood continues to grow, reflecting its role in a balanced, nutritious diet. As with all food commodities, seafood is responsible for some of the burden of food-borne illness in the community. FSANZ has estimated the annual burden of food-borne illness that might be attributed to seafood in Australia, drawing on two studies published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)²⁸²⁹ which reported that:

1. 
   seafood accounted for between 4.4 and 16.1 per cent of food-borne illness outbreaks in Western countries, in cases where the food vehicle for the outbreaks was known; and
   

2. 
   seafood was involved in 10-25 per cent of food-borne disease outbreaks in developed countries.
   

Based on this information, FSANZ estimates that 10 per cent of all food-borne illness in Australia might be attributable to seafood (approximately 500,000 cases annually). Clearly, only a very small percentage of seafood meals cause food-borne illness.

The direct cost of food-borne illness to the Australian community was estimated by the Allen Consulting Group to be $350 per case³⁰. Hence, taking account of the 5.4 million cases of food-borne illness annually, discounting an estimated 20 per cent of cases for in-the-home contamination, provides an estimate of $150 million per year as the cost of food-borne illness to the Australian community associated with the consumption of seafood.
Raw-ready-to-eat seafood (oysters and other bivalve molluscs) was ranked in the top five high-risk food industry sectors in Australia by the National Risk Validation Project³¹, on the basis of this sector’s history of food-borne illness. The NRVP estimated the average cost of illness from eating raw-ready-to-eat seafood at $4.87 per meal, far higher (by a factor of 10) than the cost of any other high-risk food sector considered in the report³².
Improvements in the risk management of bivalve molluscs since the NRVP collected this data imply that, currently, the costs to consumers should be lower than this estimate³³.
Consumers typically respond to outbreaks of food-borne illness in seafood by reducing their demand for seafood products. For example, following contamination of NSW oysters in 1997, NSW consumers immediately reduced their demand for oysters by 85 per cent. They also immediately reduced their demand for all seafood products by 30 per cent, indicating that consumers readily generalise a specific seafood risk to the broad category of seafood products³⁴.
However, despite consumers’ immediate reactions to outbreaks of food-borne illness, demand for seafood recovers over time. Notwithstanding 24 outbreaks associated with raw-ready-to-eat seafood³⁵ during the 1990s, consumer demand for seafood has increased steadily over the medium term³⁶. The implication is that while consumers immediately perceive costs when outbreaks of food-borne illness occur, these short-term costs are not sufficient to outweigh the perceived benefits of seafood to consumers over the medium-term.